NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat Tigers forward Luke Cozens celebrates his first of two goals in an 8-1 win Saturday at Co-op Place over the Swift Current Broncos.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
The Medicine Hat Tigers made a series of line changes ahead of Saturday’s 8-1 win over the Swift Current Broncos.
From Friday’s 2-1, last-minute win in Swift Current to Saturday, each of the four forward lines saw a player switch around.
The moves paid off, six different skaters scored, and the power play, held to one goal over six games, scored three times. Head coach Willie Desjardins wanted a look at something different, but more importantly, he wanted to see more from his Central division-leading group.
Despite the win and weekend sweep of the Broncos, he wants more from his team.
“We’ve been kind of going along, I’m not totally happy with how we’re going right now. We’re not consistent, we’re not shift after shift, we’re not tracking back, we’re just playing loose and that’s not going to work for us,” Desjardins said. “We’re going to have lots of games where we’re going to have to be really, really structured and it’s hard to get the guys there right now. It’s not that they’re not playing hard, but we’re not playing as focused as we need to be.”
The Tigers have won six of their last 10 games and have picked up points in 34 of their last 39 games. They’re a Red Deer Rebels loss away from clinching a playoff spot with 17 games left on the calendar. The franchise’s winningest coach says they have to get better at playing as a team.
“It’s hard, sometimes the guys want points, they want to find ways to get points and so maybe they cheat a little bit on the other side of it,” Desjardins said. “But we have to realize if we’re going to give ourselves a chance to win, what we have to do, and you can’t turn it on the last couple games. You got to turn it on over a period of time.”
He says this focus is where they miss captain Bryce Pickford the most. The Montreal Canadiens defence prospect has missed the last seven games and was back with the team this weekend, getting closer to a return, Desjardins says.
Saturday’s win saw the Tigers take eight trips to the penalty box, killing off all the offences. While some of the calls were deemed questionable by the 4,096 in attendance, Desjardins says they can’t put themselves in the spot for the officials to make calls.
“Because if you do, you’re not going to like that they call,” Desjardins said. “Sometimes you just won’t. So we have to be better than that.”
Liam Ruck scored twice in Saturday’s win, as did Luke Cozens, who added an assist to snap a five-game point draught.
“It’s huge for my confidence, the last couple of games I’ve been fighting it a little bit,” Cozens said. “So to be able to put it in and see how happy the guys are for me, it’s definitely a confidence boost.”
Dayton Reschny, Kadon McCann, Noah Davidson and Jonas Woo all added solo markers and Carter Casey made 17 saves.
